


die at your door

by gundampilot



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Magic, Death, Jeonghan is a ghost; Wonwoo is a witch., M/M, Pining, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 08:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8525689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gundampilot/pseuds/gundampilot
Summary: Wonwoo may live forever, but what if he doesn't want to?





	

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from [song of the same name](https://youtu.be/sHn_FP-ppAk) by band bruxa (witch in portuguese; its fitting).

Wonwoo has been an employee for Jeonghan for five years. Jeonghan owns a shop (quaintly named Odds and Ends) between the tavern and the blacksmith, with it’s large windows and black awning forever ominous even if the people who run it aren’t so themselves, center of the cobblestoned street where the street lamps don’t reach _quite_ as far as any person would like them to on an overcast evening. Wonwoo comes in almost every day and turns from a witch to a floor associate (“You are both,” Jeonghan had said in passing), maybe a cashier on days Jeonghan just _doesn’t want to_ do it, and this is how it has been since he was nineteen. 

The shop is freezing (it always is). Even on the hottest day of summer, when the sunlight filters through the trees and tints the walkway green and heats up the air to ungodly temperatures, the shop stays freezing. Wonwoo’s learned that’s just the nature of things with Jeonghan around. It’s always cold. Wonwoo has also learned there’s nothing he can do about it. He dresses warmly now, no matter the temperature outside. No matter if Hansol comes in for materials, hair matted with sweat to his forehead and tank top hanging off him because it’s hot, Minghao tagging along behind him in terrible leather flip flops, and Wonwoo is still dressed in long sleeves and boots. When the cobblestones are so hot that you can feel it through the soles of your shoes, and no gust of air is lasting enough.

It’s worse in the winter. There’s no savior of warmth outside of the shop’s large oak door. Jeonghan had no use for a fireplace before Wonwoo came, and it’d be too expensive to install one now. (“I actually got this place for a steal _because_ it had no fireplace.”) His hands go numb and red to almost purple, and some days he can’t even feel the weight of the rings that usually weigh down his fingers.

The walls are panelled and covered in a baroque style wallpaper, felt to the touch, dark in color—the blackest burgundy Wonwoo has ever seen. When the light hits the felt just right, it almost shines like blood, as if the walls were living (just as Wonwoo is). It’s always dark in the shop, save for the candles scattered across the room and a mysterious orb of white light Wonwoo conjured with the lazy roll of his wrist (“I like it,” Jeonghan told him. “It’s eerie. Do it everyday.” So Wonwoo does.)

Wonwoo accepts that this is just how life is now. It’s been like this for him the last five years, and it will be until the end of forever, he thinks.

It’s empty today. Wonwoo proudly thinks that it’s rare for that to happen. Years ago, it was a surprise to him the place even had regular business. But Jeonghan’s necessities for survival are zero, so keeping the shop running costs him absolutely no energy—and if it fails, then it fails. Jeonghan doesn’t need to eat, sleep, and ultimately exist anywhere. Jeonghan handles it however he likes. Anything goes. Everything goes. But regardless, in the end, Jeonghan is fine. But it’s different now with Wonwoo since he’s an employee. Jeonghan cares now--even if just a fraction--because this is Wonwoo’s livelihood (“I can’t have you dying on me.”). This is Wonwoo’s only work; the only place that can actually use his skills (or maybe just the only place he wants to spend time at). 

And Jeonghan likes that Wonwoo is part “of the occult” like him. Jeonghan smiles every time he remembers Wonwoo is “magical”, and Wonwoo likes that. 

Jeonghan is a curious person--or he was. Wonwoo likes to think Jeonghan is exactly the way he was when he was alive. Quirks and weird interests alike. He’s sure he was. It makes him like him more. But he’s still not _alive_. He’s not at all quiet, but he’s still private. He only knows Jeonghan’s name—not who was before, not what he did before, who loved before, how he died. But Wonwoo knows he likes collecting cataract eyes and stealing fairy wings. Jeonghan loves dancing around the room and blowing out all the candles one by one even though Wonwoo could put them out in a single instant with an easy spell. Jeonghan likes reading over Wonwoo’s shoulder and messing up his hair and scaring off Wonwoo’s glasses. 

And on sunny days, where the world seems absolutely too good to be real, a beam of light will hit Jeonghan perfectly, mimicking a tan glow of _living_ , as if Wonwoo could walk up to him and touch him and actually feel something solid and more than curiously cold static electricity. Wonwoo swears he can see Jeonghan’s veins and hear the ticking beating of his heart (but it’s just his own). Wonwoo wants to know what it’s like to touch Jeonghan, to grab him by the arm, to kiss him on the neck, to press him against something to do what they probably shouldn’t. Wonwoo is crazy. Wonwoo will never be able to let this go. 

“Why haven’t you passed on?” Wonwoo asks, as if it wasn’t important—as if it was idle conversation, while he pushes books onto a shelf one by one. Not that he’s dying to know. Not that’s he’s dying to solve his curious employer. 

“I’m haunting you,” Jeonghan replies, hand on cheek with bored eyes glued to an old leather-bound book he’s probably read four hundred times. And Wonwoo’s heart races—but not in fear or terror; his heart races so fast in his chest, a feeling comparable only to when you’re too high up and your body doesn’t know what to do, but Wonwoo is excited. Wonwoo can only call it thrilling. And (strange) happiness. 

Wonwoo feels like he may be the one haunting Jeonghan instead. 

“If I killed myself,” Wonwoo speaks up, “would I be able to touch you?” Finally? For once? Wonwoo will live forever if he just avoids things that can kill him (people, falling, fire, himself, for instance). But even if he can live forever with Jeonghan very much existing with him, he can’t touch him. They can’t sleep in a bed together. They can’t eat together. Or they can, but it lacks the physicality. The intimacy. The warmth.

Jeonghan freezes, but not in an abrupt and jarring way. It’s calm, and he doesn’t look up from the yellowed, deteriorating pages in front of him. 

“You stupid man,” Jeonghan says finally, but not coldly. Never coldly. Wonwoo isn’t hurt, well at least not in the way he feels he ought to be. 

Wonwoo understands that this is his life now and definitely forever. It’ll be okay.

“I won’t.” It’s all Wonwoo can say. He doesn’t want to leave Jeonghan, even if accidentally.

“Life after death is too uncertain.” Jeonghan pauses. “But that death is lonely is _not_.” And Wonwoo finds solace in this, that Jeonghan would be lonely without him, an unsaid _don’t take the risk_.

”We’ll figure it out.” Or not. But they have forever.


End file.
